The crimes Hollywood has committed against the major Russian novelists would themselves fill a pretty hefty tome. While reducing giants such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Pasternak to lavish costuming and snappy dialogue over the years, the studio moguls also made some eccentric casting choices–for instance, cover boy George Hamilton as…
When he was in his 30s, Ivan Reitman made comedies like a young man. His early movies, among them Stripes and Meatballs and Ghostbusters, were messy, cocky, charming, daffy and restless; they did anything for a laugh, even if that meant dousing John Candy in mud or Bill Murray in…
As ill-titled a movie as you’re likely to discover this year, Henry Bromell’s Panic would deliver itself unto us with much more honesty were it called something appropriate, like Torpor or A-List Clock-Punchers Unite!. It’s a middling film, and while there’s no reason to pick on this fledgling feature with…
There’s a majesty to Michael Winterbottom’s new film, a majesty and a terrible, icy chill. There’s also a fair bit of invention, as the director of the wrenching Jude–based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure–has shifted the locus of that author’s fierce, beloved English west country to the much fiercer…
Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious and mean. But hey, it’s all right, because the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us in the form…
Pearl Harbor isn’t a movie at all, but a highlight reel prepared for a Jerry Bruckheimer career retrospective. It’s as impressive and empty as any movie the producer’s ever made, most of which seem to have been cut and pasted into this World War II monstrosity. There’s Top Gun: Two…
“The values that you grew up with are that people come before things,” offers the mother of one of the protagonists of Startup.com, “and that didn’t seem to be a part of this new world.” You sure got that right, ma’am. While this new video documentary by Chris Hegedus and…
Mainstream films about the sexual awakening of adolescent males invariably come in two forms: sappily self-important (Summer of ’42) or leeringly grotesque (American Pie). Consequently it’s hard to imagine what American moviegoers are going to make of Nico and Dani, a Spanish film about teen-age boys who are neither idealized…
Kids might well be amused by the frenetic pacing of Shrek, the latest computer-animated film from DreamWorks, which moves so quickly it’s nearly a blur; they need not get the jokes to enjoy frolicking in the muck (and the maggots) with a green, snaggle-toothed ogre who wants only to be…
Like nearly all Merchant-Ivory productions, The Golden Bowl, its latest book-to-film adaptation, is a feast for the eyes, with choice real estate, exquisite interior design and dazzling costumes all bathed in a golden light that not only enriches the colors but also helps to give the settings a sense of…
Chances are you don’t know a whole lot about Angel Eyes other than that it’s the brand-new Jennifer Lopez movie. Maybe you also know that it co-stars Jim Caviezel. It’s been described in some articles as a supernatural romance, and Caviezel himself has said that he can’t tell what the…
Irish. Sex. Farce. These are not three words you see snuggled up together very often. Given the ironclad no-no’s of the Catholic church, the preoccupations imposed by their political troubles for the last eight centuries or so and frequent commutes to the local pub, the Irish probably haven’t had much…
It’s a thrill to celebrate an American movie that’s smart, wry and awesome all at once. One doesn’t always opine harmoniously with venerable critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, but his giddy appraisal employed in this movie’s ad campaign is right on. Unabashedly formulaic though it is, this roguish adventure…
Why is John Travolta allowed resurrection after pathetic resurrection, forgiven for endless sins, yet no one cares at all about his frequent former co-star, Olivia Newton-John? Perhaps she should have waited to have her second coming heralded with a Behind the Music episode, but Newton-John returns to the big screen…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme–which was nominated for 11 César Awards when it debuted in France two years ago–is yet another sign that the drop-off in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing: This is roughly the 15th French film…
A shame, this frenetic mess, as there were loads of reasons to be hopeful. First and foremost, there’s the source material, a cute and clever children’s novel by late writer E.B. White, on par with the anthropomorphized menageries he presented in Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. There’s the fact that…
The Center of the World’s screenplay was written by Ellen Benjamin Wong, based on a story concocted by Wayne Wang, precocious filmmaker-performance artist Miranda July, novelist Paul Auster (who penned Wang’s Smoke) and novelist Siri Hustvedt. With this many cooks in the kitchen, one might expect a deceptively simple stew,…
The first thing you must know about Eureka, the new film from Japanese director Shinji Aoyama, is that it runs three hours and 38 minutes. With no intermission. Having said that, let me add that despite its length, despite its deliberately measured pacing and avoidance of flashy effects, Eureka is,…
At first glance, 1999’s The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser as a lantern-jawed Indiana Jones-in-waiting facing off against an undead Telly Savalas look-alike, played like knowing spoof, a light-hearted, if half-assed, remake of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff. At first listen, it was one big joke, a horror-movie parody masquerading…
Like some errant, black-sheep Coen brothers movie that slipped away in the night only to be shorn and butchered by neighboring filmmakers, One Night at McCool’s is set in an obnoxious alter-America populated by obtuse caricatures. While this production from Michael Douglas is being touted as a sexy romantic comedy,…
With luck, Yi Yi (A One and a Two), the seventh release from writer-director Edward Yang, one of Taiwan’s most respected filmmakers, will open a vein of interest in Taiwan’s cinema, but it will be an uphill struggle. While it’s a rich and rewarding film, its pace is more leisurely…
As a kid in Brooklyn, Darren Aronofsky used to steal into Manhattan, taking the D train across the East River to sneak into movies such as A Clockwork Orange and Eraserhead. These were R-rated, and he was still 15 or 16. “They were films,” he says, smiling, “you weren’t supposed…
